Brollan on MOUZ’s recent struggles: “We truly believe in ourselves, still”

Brollan is the IGL of a MOUZ lineup desperate to get on the board with some trophies. Their last tournament win was at PGL Cluj-Napoca 2025, and despite appearing in multiple Grand Finals since, they still remain Counter-Strike’s “nearly men.”

MOUZ come to BLAST Open Rotterdam 2026 following a rough showing at ESL Pro League Season 23, where they fell in the Quarter-Finals to FUT. We had the chance to catch up with Brollan before the event, speaking about the team’s recent issues, why he still has hope for the roster, and how the map pool change affected MOUZ in 2026.

Brollan: “At the moment, we’re struggling versus everyone”

Daniel Morris: Brollan, you’re coming into this event on the back of quite a disappointing result in ESL Pro League without much time in between. What’s the process for putting that behind you as a team and just going again for this event?

Ludvig “Brollan” Brolin: Of course we review the game basically from EPL and saw a lot of details we can improve on. Especially mentally, and like energy wise. That’s what we tried to improve for this event, especially to try to just want it more than the other team. I think it’s just what we lacked in the last tournament. But yeah we just tried to, as much as we can the past two days. We have an off-day tomorrow as well, so we can practice a lot. We tried to fix the details more in upcoming games.

Daniel: As the IGL, how much responsibility do you feel for pulling the team out of these disappointing kinds of results?

Brollan: Of course, it’s disappointing, as I called it, there’s some details we could do better. We struggled a little bit in the past on Dust2, for example, which we’re trying to improve as much as we can at the moment. If we win Dust2 vs. FUT for example, we win the game basically. But yeah, we are trying to improve on these things and my responsibility is to just improve us as a team all the time.

Daniel: We’re a few months into this latest map pool. Train came out, it was a good map for you guys, and Anubis came straight in as your permaban. Would you say that the team’s been impacted at all by those changes, or is that not really something that you think about?

Brollan: Of course, we are really impacted by the map changes. It’s only because Dust2 came back into our map pool, it’s mostly Train, of course, it was our best map in the pool basically, and I think we were the best in the world on it. Because Anubis came back as well, we had it as permaban in the past, and we didn’t think that it was the best for us. We wanted to play Dust2 again. In the past, especially in the first season of 2025, we were struggling a bit versus the top teams on that map. But now at the moment, we’re struggling versus everyone. We’re trying to improve as much as we could, but it’s going to take some time and we’re working as fast as we can.

Daniel: There’s quite a lot of outside noise about the future of this lineup. How do you block out that noise and focus on just the job ahead, regardless of what the future holds?

Brollan: I think we are really focused on building a good spot for everyone. We try to ignore the media, ignore what the future holds. We just try to focus on the “now.” I think everyone knows that we can lift a trophy, everyone believes in it, so we’re trying to improve as much as we can every day. We will see – I think we are doing a really good job, it’s just we need to close the really important matches in the Playoffs.

Daniel: Coming into BLAST Open, you’re in Group B with the likes of PARIVISION, Spirit, Vitality, obviously The MongolZ as well, who you face first. That’s quite a tough draw. Just tell me a little bit about your expectations for the event.

Brollan: We play The MongolZ in the first game, which I think is a good matchup for us in the past. We will try to do our best in the Group Stage and we’ll see how it goes from there. As you said, really tough Group Stage. We’ll probably have Vitality in our second game if we win, so… we’ll see how it goes. Really tough opponent. Spirit of course… we’ll see how it goes. We just try to take it step by step, as like in the past, especially in EPL, we thought we were gonne maybe lift a trophy. That basically added some more excess pressure on ourselves which didn’t help up in the end. Just try to play in the “now” and hopefully we can make another Playoffs.

Daniel: Coming to The MongolZ up first. You’ve beaten them twice already since they added cobrazera. You haven’t dropped a map against them. Can you tell me some of the differences that you’ve noticed in the way that they’ve played when you compare it to last year with Senzu?

Brollan: I think it’s just much firepower difference, to be honest. Senzu is just a raw talent individually, and basically just wins rounds by himself. I think cobrazera is a good player, but maybe not on the level on Senzu. It makes them less… not dangerous, but in some way of that. We basically know how they are playing and we are taking advantage of it, how we know they are playing. When we try to play in their face in our CT sides, they have a lot of times where they are struggling, especially in the past.

Daniel: Looking at the event as a whole, what gives you guys the hope that this can be the event that you finally make the leap into that trophy-winning category?

Brollan: We always try to have the motivation to win. We also have the fire to do. We haven’t won a really big event with this lineup, so we are trying to always have the fire in us and go step-by-step. There’s a lot of really dangerous teams in this tournament especially. I think there’s only Vitality that’s really consistent in this season so far, so anything can happen. Vitality is up there, and the rest of us, maybe Falcons, FURIA, and us, maybe are more of a dark horse besides them. We do everthing we can to lift the trophy and we truly believe in ourselves, still.